Long before Spike Jonze became known for converting the White Stripes into Legos and helping theater audiences find the Wild Things, he set a man on fire. Not literally, but the video he directed for LA-based band Wax’s song “California” featured a flame-engulfed man running in slow motion. The video was banned from MTV’s daytime airplay, but helped Wax secure a spot on the Billboard Modern Rock charts, just one of many encounters with music industry success for Wax frontman, Joe Sib. Along with partner Bill Armstrong, Sib co-founded Side One Dummy Records, which has been home to some of the most successful acts in punk rock, including Flogging Molly, The Casualties, Anti-Flag, Gogol Bordello, and 7 Seconds. He’s compiled some of the best stories from his time in the industry into a “broken word” show called California Calling, which will be performed November 25th at the Boathouse in Costa Mesa.

Sib took some time to answer a few questions for LA Music Blog’s readers about his introduction to punk rock, what he has going on with Side One, and why he loves the current state of the music industry.

Tell us a little bit about how you got your start in the music industry?

I never planned on being in the music business because when I was growing up the only thing that I really wanted to do was just be in a band. That was everything to me. I was in bands from the time I was fifteen years old, growing up in northern California. My whole point of being in those bands was I wanted to go on tour. I wanted to make records. I wanted to do that, and the music I was into was punk rock. I basically grew up on this little ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains up until I was about twelve or thirteen years old, and when my parents separated, I went to visit my dad all the time in San Jose. When I went to go visit him in San Jose, which was the city, I started going to a skateboard park called Winchester Skateboard Park. At that skateboard park was the first place I ever heard Black Flag, 999, The Buzzcocks, so all of a sudden skateboarding and punk rock were the two predominant forces in my life. That’s all I did all through high school.

Also, at that point, I was going to shows. Any band that would roll through San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco, I was there, front and center. Sooner or later I got hit with the idea that I’m going to start my own band. The first band I started was in 1985 or ’84. That was my first band, and basically at that point I was the singer. What I realized looking back on it is I was always the guy who was doing the business. I was also the guy booking the show. I was always the guy finding the place to practice. I was always the guy getting the car to drive the gear. I was the guy finding the gear, so I was always kind of on the business end of it. I fought it tooth and nail because I didn’t want to be that guy. I wanted to be the singer in the band, fucking beer in one hand, clove cigarette in the other, just fucking hang out. What ends up happening is you start adapting to what your strengths are, and my strengths were doing a lot of the business.

That kind of all came to an end in San Jose, and I moved to southern California in 1990. I started the band Wax, and at that point I was the business go-to guy. I was that guy all through Wax, and at the end of Wax, or during Wax, we ended up getting dropped from our first record label, which was Virgin. When we got dropped from our first record deal, I kinda reverted back to the DIY spirit of my teen years. I said “We don’t need a record label, let’s do it ourselves.” That was how Side One started. I put out our first Wax record, and we got resigned right around the time period. My roommate was going to start a label, and I was like, “Dude, if you start a label and I start a label, fuck, we should do it together.” He’s like, “I’m going to start a label called Dummy.” I was like, “Well, alright. We should call our record label Side One Dummy,” and that’s how it all came together.

How did you and Bill originally meet?

Roommates. I needed a place to live. We had a mutual friend, Chris Shiflett, who’s the guitar player in the Foo Fighters. While I was in Wax, I was home from tour, and I needed a place to stay, and he said, “Dude, you should move into our place cuz we need a roommate,” so I moved in. I shared a room with this guy named Bill Armstrong. I had never met him, but we had a lot in common. We’d sit around in the morning and talk about rock and roll, and before we knew it, we started talking about starting a label together. That was fifteen years ago.

What are some projects you’re currently working on, with or without Side One Dummy?

Well, everything I do has to do with Side One Dummy. I am Side One Dummy for the rest of my life. I may not have a Side One Dummy tattoo on my fucking arm, but Bill and I are Side One Dummy to the bone. We started this company when we were kids. We were twenty-something years old. We’ve been doing it for fifteen years, so any project I do, Rock to Roll, that all runs through Side One Dummy. My California Calling broken word show that I do, that’s a story about me joining Winchester Skateboard Park in 1981 and hearing Black Flag for the first time. That is the exact day that basically led me on the road that would lead me to starting Side One Dummy. So everything ties into Side One Dummy. Side One Dummy is what I’ve been doing for my adult life.

California Calling has a side to it that helps out with charities as well. What are you tied in with on that?

I started doing this event about three years ago called Rock to Roll. It’s a benefit for UCP Wheels for Humanity. UCP Wheels for Humanity provides wheelchairs and assistance to people in third-world countries that don’t get an opportunity to get any shot at getting a wheelchair. They help people in Vietnam. They help people in Costa Rica. All over the world. I became friends with them about three years ago. I thought, “You know what? I know enough people in the punk-rock community that we should at least do one show a year and raise a couple thousand dollars.” In three years, we raised $87,000 with Rock to Roll. This year, our show’s December 3rd in San Francisco, and if everything goes well, we will raise $100,000 in four years, which I feel really, really good about.

In the meantime, when I started doing California Calling, I just wanted an outlet. Spoken word is something by someone that you’re generally going to walk out with like, “Wow man. That’s something that is really smart.” I call it broken word because my story is about growing up punk rock. I think when you get done seeing my show, because I have photographs from throughout that entire era that I’ve saved, back from when I was a kid playing at Gilman street, back to pictures of Mike Ness—I have a really big story about me and Mike Ness—and I think when you walk out of California Calling, if you were never into punk rock, if you were never into skateboarding, you at least walk out with a different perspective on it. Hopefully you see why people love and are obsessed with punk rock. That’s this particular story. What I decided to do, when I do this show, sometimes I tie it into Wheels for Humanity. It’s just another way to raise a couple thousand dollars each time we do it for some wheelchairs. I feel like we’re able to that. It’s fun. It’s really cool.

What advice would you have for someone who’s trying to get into the business side of the music industry considering the current state of things?

I would say right now, if you’re getting into the music business, what a great time. What an exciting time. If I could go back in time and start a band right now and be fifteen again, I’d love it. I’d love it. You don’t need anybody to get your songs heard yet. Obviously, you’re always going to…I don’t know if you’re going to need a record company, that term might change, but you’re always going to need someone like me, someone like Brett Gurewitz [Epitaph Records]. You’re always going to need someone like Bill Armstrong. Why? Because what guys like I do is we work with artists. We sit down, and we love music, and we figure out how their music can be heard by more people. We figure out together what road they want to go down, and we figure out how big and how far they want to take it. You’re going to always need guys like us.

It’s the same reason why in the world of punk rock there’s only been three dudes that really stand out who did it: Brett Gurewitz, Ian MacKaye [Dischord Records], and Fat Mike [Fat Wreck Chords]. There’s a reason why there’s not hundreds of these guys, because for the most part, when you’re a musician, you’re like, “Dude, the last thing I want to do all day is talk about marketing and distribution. That’s not fun.” But if I were a young band right now, or someone getting into it, it’s so exciting because you can record a record on Friday night, you can mix it on Saturday, you can fucking do the artwork on Sunday, and on Monday you can fucking throw it out there for the rest of the world to see it. Maybe even during Saturday night you can Youtube your song, and the next thing you know, 400 people just saw your song.

That wasn’t going on when I was growing up. If you weren’t on MTV or if you didn’t have money, you couldn’t be shit. I love the fact that you can do that. I feel that labels like ours, what we do is when you get to a certain point where you want to have more people working with you, more people sharing your vision, you come to Side One and say, “Look, we have 15,000 people looking at our video. We want a million people.” OK, we’ll help you. “We made a record that sounds this way. We need your help to get to this place.” I think it’s great. I love it. I think it’s an exciting time right now.

No one makes a million dollars anymore. So if you’re in the music business, and you still like your job, and you love what you do, like I love what I do…I’m in the music business because I love music. This is what I do. I’ve been doing the same exact thing since I was fourteen years old. I do the same thing. I talk about music all day. I talk to guys like you. I listen to music all day. I’m just doing the same thing. There’s no backup plan for me. There’s no backup plan like if I wasn’t doing this I got a degree in fucking chemical engineering. It’s like I know rock and roll and that’s what I do. If I make a living doing it, great.

I just feel that right now the only positive side to where the music business is that it’s really gotten rid of a lot of people that had no love for music, that didn’t really want to be in this for the rest of their lives. I don’t like to see people lose their jobs, but there are some people that I think it’s just better that they’re not part of this world we live in, you know, music. I think it’s better. They’re like, “Hey, I’m a numbers guy.” That’s great, You should work for fucking IBM. “Hey, I don’t like music. I like to sell things.” Great, you should work for a company that sells a product. I think it’s OK that some of those guys had to leave the music business. I do not want to come off sounding like, “Yeah, you know all those people at major labels that got fired, fuck them,” because that’s not the way I feel. I just feel that with the amount of change in the music business that some of the music people that were in the music business for the wrong reason have left.

Looking at the situation of the industry and how major labels are bleeding, it seems like the independents are really the ones that are picking up again.

The only reason we’re picking up again is we don’t run the overhead that the majors do. It’s a simple numbers game. I have seven people that work here. Warner Brothers has seven hundred, you know what I’m saying? It’s just a simple numbers game. I don’t make a million dollars a year. I don’t make five hundred thousand dollars a year, you know what I’m saying? We don’t have an overhead here like just for Bill and Joe’s salary it’s two million dollars, you know? We have seven people here, and that’s the reason companies like ours are surviving. It’s just a simple numbers game. You can’t maintain that overhead with the current way that people are getting their music.

One thing that I’ve noticed, and this is something punk has never died out on, but I’ve noticed that vinyl is making a rebound, I guess you could call it, these days. What is your thought on that?

I love it.

Do you think that people are really starting to get back into actually listening to music again?

With the vinyl resurgence, you have people saying, “This sounds really good.” When I hear “This sounds really good on vinyl” I think that’s just the way it is.

It’s good people are taking that kind of interest again. Who are some of your newest artists on Side One?

Right now, we have a lot of great artists that are coming out next year. I think that right now some of the stuff we’re really excited about is Broadway Calls. I’m really excited about them. They just had a record come out, but I’d say right now that the newest artist on Side One that we’re all really excited about is Audra Mae. That’s the most current new artist, Audra Mae. She’s amazing. She’s recently been out there on the Chuck Ragan Revival Tour, and she’s got a voice that will make you cry. She’s just a beautiful, beautiful person and an amazing singer. I just think that the sky’s the limit for her. I think she’s just gonna do great, great things.

Who are some of the bands outside of Side One that you’re listening to right now?

I listen a lot to Jim Ward. He was out on the Revival Tour. I listen to his album a lot. I don’t think he’s got a label right now. I think he’s on Doghouse. I listen a lot to Dead to Me’s new record. Let me see, who else…Dead to Me, Jim Ward, new Pearl Jam. Love the new Pearl Jam. I think that’s the record of the fucking year. The first four songs are just fucking great. I think that would be it right now that’s in my player. Jim Ward, Dead to Me, Pearl Jam, that’s it.

For more info on Joe Sib and Sideone Dummy check out:

www.sideonedummy.com/

or

www.completecontrolradio.com/